St. Columbkille, Chicago

If you’ve ever thought the intersection of Grand and Paulina felt a little off…it’s because there’s a whole church missing.

Completed in 1877, Bauer & Loebnitz designed St. Columbkille Catholic Church. The parish complex took up almost the entire block bounded by Grand, Paulina, Ohio, and Marshfield, featuring a school, a convent, a rectory, and–of course–a funeral home across the street. An early casualty of the Archdiocese's consolidation of dwindling congregations, St. Columbkille was demolished in 1975. 

So, what’s changed? Well…literally everything, I can’t point to anything that’s survived. Obviously the parochial school was there when this postcard was published, but it was apparently fully obscured from this vantage point south of Grand. The building to the right of the church itself is the rectory, which was demolished alongside St. Columbkille in 1975.

St. Columbkille parish was organized in 1859, initially as a mission of (not yet Old) St. Patrick’s Church. Catering to the Irish working class, as one journalist delicately put it, St. Columbkille's was “a congregation not over well supplied with the things of this world”.

They quickly outgrew a humble wood frame church, and began construction of something much more monumental in 1870–less than ideal timing. While the Great Chicago Fire missed this neighborhood in 1871, the building frenzy that followed jacked up the price of labor and materials, halting construction (the financial crisis that followed, the Panic of 1873, probably didn’t help either). Designed by Bauer & Loebnitz, the new St. Columbkille finally opened in 1877–but without the two towers initially envisioned and with interior decoration incomplete. 

German immigrants Augustus Bauer and Robert Loebnitz were one of the architecture firms who absolutely cleaned UP during the rebuilding process–the firm designed 51 (!) buildings in the year after the fire. One of those Bauer & Loebnitz post-fire buildings still stands at 70 W. Hubbard. 

Back at St. Columbkille, the interior frescoes were finished in 1891, and in 1896 the church hired architects Hill & Woltersdorf to finish the building with two towers. Hill & Woltersdorf was actually the successor firm to Bauer & Loebnitz, so it was a fitting choice twenty years later–although for whatever reason, they could only swing one tower in the end. 

The number of parishioners at St. Columbkille was already decreasing by 1916. The church attributed that decline to “other nationalities settling in that part of the city”. Apparently, the Irish Catholic parish–relatively old in a very young, fast-changing city–struggled to attract Italians, Poles, Ukrainians or other new Catholic immigrants. Although maybe not for lack of effort–I was surprised to see an ad for the St. Columbkille nursery in Draugas, Chicago’s Lithuanian Catholic newspaper. 

The school at St. Columbkille shut down in 1971, and the church itself in 1975, part of an early wave of consolidations and closings by the Archdiocese of Chicago (and a hint at what was to come over the next 50 years). St. Columbkille’s final mass was performed on June 27th, 1975, with the remaining parishioners encouraged to join Holy Innocents half a mile away.

With renovation expensive and an awareness that the continuing demographic trends could strand them with dozens of decaying hulks around the city, the Archdiocese decided to raze the church, but keep the land. After stripping the interiors of valuables, a fire broke out and destroyed most of the building. 

Esperanza School, a school for kids with developmental disabilities, leased the former parochial school in 1975 and will be celebrating their 50th year there next year. Now Esperanza Community Services, their programming has expanded to include education and housing for kids and adults with developmental disabilities. 

The site of St. Columbkille Church sat empty for nearly 20 years, until Maryville Academy opened the Paulina Home in 1994, a foster home for sexually abused and exploited children. It also housed a Catholic Youth Organization office (CYO founder Bishop Bernard Sheil went to St. Columbkille as a kid). Cardinal Bernardin presided at the dedication, just one day after someone who accused him of sexual abuse had dropped his accusation–the triumphant tone of the coverage is pretty sickening, especially given what kind of facility he was opening and that another accusation came out last year (the Cardinal is long dead). 

Now known as the John & Mary Madden Center, Maryville Academy operates the St. Monica Program from here. A substance abuse recovery home for mothers, the St. Monica provides a residence for up to 18 mothers and their children, ensuring the kids can stay with their mothers while they receive treatment for substance abuse.

St. Columbkille itself is a void, a feeling that there is something missing in an odd stretch of Grand. 

Further reading:

• The Catholic Church in Chicago, 1673-1871; an historical sketch

Our History - Maryville Academy

Our History The Road to 140 Maryville Academy celebrated the 140th anniversary of its official dedication on July 1, 2023. The milestone celebration highlights its mission of protecting children and…

Maryville Academy

St. Columbkille in fire insurance maps from 1886, 1892, 1916, and 1950.

There was a funeral home across Marshfield, of course–the building is still there.

The old Metropolitan West Elevate passed right through here–perhaps also why this stretch of Grand feels so cursed. There was even a station here.

I thought it was interesting that a catholic priest was taking out an ad for Passover greetings in the Sentinel, hiago's Jewish newspaper, in 1944.

This is where I took the photo from.